Cybercrime | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

What happens when cybercriminals no longer need deep skills to breach your defenses? Today's attackers are armed with powerful tools that do the heavy lifting — from AI-powered phishing kits to large botnets ready to strike. And they're not just after big corporations. Anyone can be a target when fake identities, hijacked infrastructure, and insider tricks are used to slip past security unnoticed. This week's threats are a reminder: waiting to react is no longer an option. Every delay gives attackers more ground. ⚡ Threat of the Week Critical SAP NetWeaver Flaw Exploited as 0-Day — A critical security flaw in SAP NetWeaver (CVE-2025-31324, CVSS score: 10.0) has been exploited by unknown threat actors to upload JSP web shells with the goal of facilitating unauthorized file uploads and code execution. The attacks have also been observed using the Brute Ratel C4 post-exploitation framework, as well as a well-known technique called Heaven's Gate to bypass endpoint protections. ...

The threat actors behind the Darcula phishing-as-a-service ( PhaaS ) platform have released new updates to their cybercrime suite with generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) capabilities. "This addition lowers the technical barrier for creating phishing pages, enabling less tech-savvy criminals to deploy customized scams in minutes," Netcraft said in a fresh report shared with The Hacker News. "The new AI-assisted features amplify Darcula's threat potential by simplifying the process to build tailored phishing pages with multi-language support and form generation — all without any programming knowledge." Darcula was first documented by the cybersecurity company in March 2024 as a toolkit that leveraged Apple iMessage and RCS to send smishing messages to trick recipients into clicking on bogus links under the guise of postal services like USPS. Earlier this year, the operators of Darcula PhaaS began testing a major update that enabled customers to cl...

Cybersecurity researchers are warning of a "widespread and ongoing" SMS phishing campaign that's been targeting toll road users in the United States for financial theft since mid-October 2024. "The toll road smishing attacks are being carried out by multiple financially motivated threat actors using the smishing kit developed by 'Wang Duo Yu,'" Cisco Talos researchers Azim Khodjibaev, Chetan Raghuprasad, and Joey Chen assessed with moderate confidence. The phishing campaigns , per the company, impersonate U.S. electronic toll collection systems like E-ZPass, sending SMS messages and Apple iMessages to individuals across Washington, Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Texas, Ohio, Illinois, and Kansas about an unpaid toll and clicking on a fake link sent in the chat. It's worth noting some aspects of the toll phishing campaign were previously highlighted by security journalist Brian Krebs in January 2025, with the activity traced back to a China-b...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new, sophisticated remote access trojan called ResolverRAT that has been observed in attacks targeting healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors. "The threat actor leverages fear-based lures delivered via phishing emails, designed to pressure recipients into clicking a malicious link," Morphisec Labs researcher Nadav Lorber said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Once accessed, the link directs the user to download and open a file that triggers the ResolverRAT execution chain." The activity, observed as recently as March 10, 2025, shares infrastructure and delivery mechanism overlap with phishing campaigns that have distributed information stealer malware such as Lumma and Rhadamanthys, as documented by Cisco Talos and Check Point last year. A notable aspect of the campaign is the use of localized phishing lures, with the emails crafted in the languages predominantly spoken in the targeted countries. This includ...

What are IABs? Initial Access Brokers (IABs) specialize in gaining unauthorized entry into computer systems and networks, then selling that access to other cybercriminals. This division of labor allows IABs to concentrate on their core expertise: exploiting vulnerabilities through methods like social engineering and brute-force attacks.  By selling access, they significantly mitigate the risks associated with directly executing ransomware attacks or other complex operations. Instead, they capitalize on their skill in breaching networks, effectively streamlining the attack process for their clients. This business model enables IABs to operate with a lower profile and reduced risk, while still profiting from their technical skills. Operating primarily on dark web forums and underground markets, IABs can function independently or as part of larger organizations like Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) gangs.  They act as a crucial link in the cybercrime ecosystem, providing the i...

Law enforcement authorities have announced that they tracked down the customers of the SmokeLoader malware and detained at least five individuals. "In a coordinated series of actions , customers of the Smokeloader pay-per-install botnet, operated by the actor known as 'Superstar,' faced consequences such as arrests, house searches, arrest warrants or 'knock and talks,'" Europol said in a statement. Superstar is alleged to have run a pay-per-install service that enabled its customers to gain unauthorized access to victim machines, using the loader as a conduit to deploy next-stage payloads of their choice. According to the European law enforcement agency, the access afforded by the botnet was used for various purposes such as keylogging, webcam access, ransomware deployment, and cryptocurrency mining. The latest action, part of an ongoing coordinated exercise called Operation Endgame , which led to the dismantling of online infrastructure associated with...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of an artificial intelligence (AI) powered platform called AkiraBot that's used to spam website chats, comment sections, and contact forms to promote dubious search engine optimization (SEO) services such as Akira and ServicewrapGO. "AkiraBot has targeted more than 400,000 websites and successfully spammed at least 80,000 websites since September 2024," SentinelOne researchers Alex Delamotte and Jim Walter said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The bot uses OpenAI to generate custom outreach messages based on the purpose of the website." Targets of the activity include contact forms and chat widgets present in small to medium-sized business websites, with the framework sharing spam content generated using OpenAI's large language models (LLMs). What makes the "sprawling" Python-based tool stand apart is its ability to craft content such that it can bypass spam filters. It's believe...